Wary Microsoft Partners Take Pragmatic Path

Share

Wary Microsoft Partners Take Pragmatic Path

Behind the announcements this week by BackWeb and PointCast that they would join to endorse a new standard for Net broadcast channels lay this important lesson in business pragmatism: Cooperate with Microsoft now if you want to compete with Microsoft in the future.

Did Microsoft force shotgun weddings on its new partners? "I don't think Microsoft gets married, to be honest with you," PointCast CEO Chris Hassett said Wednesday in an interview with Wired News. "They partner where they think they need to. They are aggressive. We understand them, they understand us. I think we can work together, and we're going to compete. That's how I view the relationship."

The CEOs of both BackWeb and PointCast insist that the development of a standard - and their endorsements of it - can only help their companies prepare for that future competition. "I think there's a little confusion: The issue is not the standard - that's good for everyone involved," BackWeb CEO Eli Barkat said in an interview on the floor of Internet World on Wednesday. "It's the foundation, the basic component that everyone needs to have."

Barkat's company is focused on the technology side of push - it's selling servers to companies that want to create their own channels to distribute media and software directly to customers.

Assuming Microsoft's new Channel Description Format - which was also endorsed Wednesday by HotWired and an additional 30 Internet media companies - becomes an established standard, Barkat said he expects it can only help his company establish itself as a leading technology vendor. "People are going to start playing with that, and they're going to hit issues with things like scalability and personalization," Barkat said. "We're going to supply the robust, backend side of the equation."

BackWeb's opportunity to do this, however, is essentially a race against the clock. He believes a winnowing of the players in the push-media technology realm is already under way. "The winners will be determined in the next quarter," he said, leaving them to prepare for what he believes is inevitable: Microsoft's eventual entry into the market. "They're very focused on the browser space and the fight with Netscape," Barkat said. "We won't see anything from them before the end of the year."

At PointCast meanwhile, Hassett said he's content to stay out of the way while Microsoft and Netscape fight it out. "That's a war. There are missiles going off," he said. He's racing to build his company into one of the leaders producing consumer media, not technology, in the push realm, which Hassett labels "Internet broadcasting."

Hassett may have entered into partnership with Microsoft to develop the standard channel format and supply PointCast to Internet Explorer 4.0 customers, but he has no illusions about what a partnership with Microsoft means.

"I think Microsoft in 1975 felt that they needed to be in every business. It's just a matter of time. They've progressed on that path pretty well," Hassett said. But Microsoft has yet to focus fully on his market. "When they flip that switch - and it probably is a when, not an if - is anybody's guess."